Nine Parchments is a fantastic co-op title and it stands strongly enough as a single player game as well. I played this title all the way through in single player first before trying my hand at the multiplayer. The multiplayer is more enjoyable, but you can play to your style of choice. It can get pretty difficult single player especially if you build a character up with just one or two major spell types.

This game seems very inspired by the Magicka series which is wonderful. There are a few things that are different such as how you cast your spells and not having to keep track of things like i'm wet; casting a shock spell will kill me. In this sense the game is more open to players of various skill types to enjoy. You can play it on a simple and casual difficulty or you can choose to go the distance and put it on a hardcore perma-death mode. There are collectibles and secrets to find as well and they are never too impossibly far out of the way. I do wish you can simply go back and replay a level if you missed something.

You can unlock equipment that can be used across all characters. There are staves and hats. The staves give you different stats and bonuses while the hats just look fancy. I would have liked to see the hats also have a statistical value.

You start out with two characters and there are eight to unlock. Each character has different skins to unlock which starts out with different spells. You also get different skill trees as you unlock the skins which can be used across all the skins for that character. The spell system and how you can unlock them is pretty fun, although it is much more enjoyable on multiplayer.

As you progress the story you collect parchments which gives you the ability to choose a new spell. The boss fights you have to overcome to obtain them are all fun and interesting in their own way. You are given three choices out of the pool of spells. This can sometimes result in making a build harder to do which adds to the challenge of the game. If you are playing multiplayer. There is a choice to randomly select a spell out of all the left over spells of all players if you aren't really feeling like choosing one of yours.

This adds a fun roulette play style that can be dangerous and interesting. You can only respec spells if playing from the start of the game so this also makes your choices worth the thought. You will be stuck with those spells for the 38 level campaign, unless you start over in another session. Your character level does save though regardless of the game you are in.

Another feature about the multiplayer I really enjoyed was "inverted friendly-fire". It is inevitable and hilarious when a spell is miscast and you end up blowing up, freezing, burning, or shocking your team. The inverted option if you so choose to make players be extra cautious of their destructive spell usage; makes it to where if you hurt an ally, you take the damage instead.

The story is a decent enough and simple experience. What is more important here is the gameplay and beautiful world you are roaming around in. You will be challenged by hoards of enemies that have different attack types and elements. You may run into a wave of frost enemies that have someone with a fire protection spell going on. This means you can't use fire and ice easily in this fight until you at least knock out the fire protection.

The dialogue is funny at times and I enjoyed it. If anything I could give a notch for, it would be on the dialogue between characters. There isn't as much character to character interaction as I had hoped for. Seeing these players bounce their dialogue off each other would have been a fantastic addition to the co-op experience.

Pros

+Great gameplay with a wide range of possibilities+Replayability+Excellent adjustable co-op +Wide range of difficulty play style+Beautiful worlds to traverse and explore

Mix?

~For the most part it's pretty linear. Some exploration would have been nice.~Combat while fun can get repetitive. There is some variety of enemies, but you will find yourself fighting the same ones for several fights and very rarely it can get stale. ~Character to character interaction is low in multiplayer games

Cons

-As stable and enjoyable as single player is, this title is just much more enjoyable as a co-op title. Once you play multiplayer you may not want to go back to single player.

This is a great title and deserving of the asking price. You will get plenty of worthwhile gameplay out of playing through the campaign and than replaying it with friends or random players to unlock more content or play in a different style. I never really touched the Trine games, but playing this one makes me want to grab a few friends that have them and finally getting around to exploring them. I've seen this game go down to ten dollars for a sale, but if you enjoy strong co-op titles or enjoyed magicka than go ahead and pick this one up when you have the funds.